Fig. 4

DCA for prediction of different metastatic patterns of regional lymph nodes in patients intraoperatively diagnosed with esophageal cancer. a, regional lymph nodes. b, continuous regional lymph nodes. c, skipping regional lymph nodes in validation cohort. DCA, decision curve analysis. N, nomogram; CT, contrast-enhanced computed tomography. The x-axis and y-axis represent threshold probability and net benefit, respectively. The black line corresponds to net benefit when all patients are considered to not have metastasis of the regional lymph nodes. The gray line corresponds to net benefit when all patients are considered to have metastasis of the regional lymph nodes